Tag: mobile security report

The release revealed that cybercrimes have cost Canadians $3 billion over the last 12 months.

According to the latest Norton Report regarding mobile security, cybercrime in Canada has cost $3 billion over the last year, which is an increase of more than double over the $1.4 billion that had been recorded over the previous year.

The software security maker, Symantec, reported that more than 7 million people have been victims.

The U.S. based company shared in its 2013 security report that more than 7 million people in Canada have been cybercrime victims in the last 12 months, alone. The average cost per victim of these various types of digital crime is approximately $380 percent.

The cost of mobile security crimes per victim has also increased for victims globally.

It has risen to $113 (USD) over the last 12 months, which means that it cost each victim just over $300. The authors of the report conducted a survey of more than 13,000 people in approximately 24 countries around the world. What it determined was that mobile security, cyber attacks, and the sharing of sensitive information are becoming increasingly common.

This increase in cybercrime is occurring throughout many different channels. It involves issues such as mobile security breaches, unauthorized computer access, open Wi-Fi networks issues and identity theft. The report attributes the rapid growth rate to the rise in the use of smartphones and tablets particularly over open Wi-Fi networks.

According to Lynn Hargrove, the director of consumer Solutions at Symantec Canada, “The move to mobile is really one of the core findings that we’ve seen and as people have tablets and smartphones, that’s where the cybercriminals are going.” She also pointed out that people just don’t seem to be taking this mobile security risk as seriously as it really is. She stated that people aren’t securing their smartphones and tablets as widely as they do their desktops and laptops. Computers are far more likely to have antivirus programs than smartphones.

The online and mobile security report indicated that 60 percent of device users in Canada don’t even realize that there are security programs that are designed for use by their tablets and smartphones. Only one in four smartphone users have some level of free security software and 32 percent of them have experienced a cybercrime in the last year.

A report from Check Point Software revealed that for nearly half of them, this led to over $100,00 in damages.

A recent report produced by Check Point Software, which was published under the title of “The Impact of Mobile Devices on Information Security” has indicated that over the 12 months preceding their survey 79 percent of businesses experienced an incident relating to mobile security.

The survey not only determined that these issues were quite common but they are also very costly.

The survey included the participation of 790 IT professionals. It was conducted by Dimensional Research, which discovered that for 42 percent of the businesses that experienced these mobile security incidences, 42 percent said that it cost over $100,000 to repair the damages. Moreover, for 16 percent of the participants, the cost of these incidents was greater than $500,000.

Among large businesses, 52 percent said that mobile security incidents cost them over a half million dollars.

Nearly all of the companies that permitted the use of personal smartphones said that there is a growth in the number of these devices connecting to their corporate networks. Moreover, 45 percent of them said that there are five times more personal smartphones connecting to those networks than there had been in 2011.

At the same time, the research suggested that 63 percent of the participating businesses do not manage the corporate information over personal smartphones. Furthermore, 93 percent have stated that they have struggled to implement policies surrounding their BYOD programs. In fact, 67 percent felt that mobile security regarding corporate information is their primary challenge with BYOD policies.

Check Point mobile security evangelist and researcher, Tomer Teller, explained in a statement that “Without question, the explosion of BYOD, mobile apps, and cloud services has created a herculean task to protect corporate information for businesses both large and small.” He added that “An effective mobile security strategy will focus on protecting corporate information on the multitude of devices and implementing proper secure access controls to information and applications on the go. Equally important is educating employees about best practices as majority of businesses are more concerned with careless employees than cybercriminals.”